In 1956, José M. Bosch, President of Ron Bacardí y Compañía approached Mies to commission the design of a new office space. He was particularly interested in a very open plan, and the relatively simple idea Mies came up with involved a square roof plate supported on each side by two columns. Though initial structural challenges had to be dealt with, the resulting pavilion typology became integral to Mies’ architectural lexicon, in many ways the epitome of his universal conception of space. source: wikipedia